Promises Made, Promises Kept
by Brit-bound
Summary: Promises are fragile gifts. This is the story of promises made and promises kept between two lovers who could never vow them publicly but always cherished them in their hearts. And who did honor them. Finally.


_Tom Builder and Ellen grew out of the fertile and gifted mind of writer Ken Follett and took life on the screen thanks to John Pielmeier, but through the gift of FanFiction, I claim another small chapter in their lives to share with those who can't get enough of their story._

_The lovers, in truth, gave more to each other than we knew before._

_Discover the precious gift they shared here in "Promises Made, Promises Kept."_

….

God-dedicated hands were warm against heretic flesh.

His long and slender fingers rested gently in her yielding woman curves just above the bony ridge framing her mother-basket. His thumbs, the knuckles still showing traces of stone dust imbedded far too deeply for far too long to yield to his ablutions, skimmed up and down in slow strokes on either side of the shallow depression that had once connected Ellen to her own mother.

Tom dipped his tongue into that sensitive tiny crater as she smiled down into his dark silver-tipped curls and sighed a woman's passion.

"I can feel him just here," he whispered, kissing his way gently down her belly.

She laughed softly. "You can not. He's not yet big enough to make himself felt."

He raised his fine head. The firelight sparkled in green eyes and burnished his skin to a shimmering, satiny, golden housing for muscles and sinews. It made her hot and wet in her welcoming places.

"I'm his father. I can feel him," he assured her as he laid the bearded cheek she adored against the gently puffed softness that cradled his child.

She felt the sweep of his eyelashes and the movement of his hands as they slipped across her skin. His strong arms encircled her and drew her even closer to himself.

"I will never leave him alone," he whispered. "No matter what happens."

Ellen heard the promise.

She understood the full implication of his pledge.

She blinked back tears she had never shown any man save Jack's father, but her fingers, twining through her lover's hair, fluttered down then to her man's bare shoulders and translated her emotion perfectly.

"Then come to me now," she whispered. "Come into me, Tom Builder. Love me."

He kissed his way slowly back up her body and captured her hungry mouth with his own.

"I do love you," he breathed urgently as she shifted her legs and opened the path to her womanhood for him.

"Show me how much. You can now," she smiled.

Later she remembered what it had been like. Their clothing - discarded piece by simple piece as the garments became an impediment to their passion. His hands, his lips, his teeth, his tongue, his hot, pulsing, velvet-smooth dagger of life - his very breath, it seemed - claiming every part of her as they celebrated their love for each other with a freedom they had never quite dared explore before.

"Marry me. Marry me," he grinned into her eyes as his body rocked above hers.

But her answer was the same she had given him for all the many moonspun nights of their time together.

He did not argue. He simply adored her with his body.

Ellen knew without doubt the night she had conceived her lover's child. Had poets told her story, they would have named it the time she could never forget. In truth, however, what she would forever recall was that her world shifted at this very midnight hour, weeks after the conception, when she shared her secret with the child's father.

For poets had no place in her life. But fate-shapers did.

…..

Later, as the fire died down – inside and all around them – she moved into the curve of his body as he lay propped with his back to the fabric-draped wall of the cave. His palms cupped her breasts and a finger of each hand glided up to stroke her tender nipples.

"I will watch him feast on you," he dreamed. "And I will count myself the most blessed man on earth."

She fell asleep against him, giving in to the weariness of a woman sharing her life force with the essence of the man she loved.

Tom lay awake long after, his thoughts a jumble of happy emotion: Gratitude that God was entrusting him – him of all people – with the care of a helpless new life. Delight – the same male-centered delight that had visited him each time his dear Agnes had told him of a babe he had made with her. Lust for a woman privy to love secrets whose origin he did not dare question. Devotion that never abandoned sweet hope for a future with that woman. Faith that somehow – with the life of an innocent child in the balance – all would come right for them.

Before the sun had hinted at anything more than the merest slip of springtime nurturing, he had kissed Ellen awake and cradled her carefully in a long good-bye. She watched him with a self-satisfied little smile as he pulled on his blue tunic – the one she loved to see him in.

"You are not angry at me then, Tom Builder?"

"Angry?" he echoed with amazement. "How could I be angry? What you are giving me -" he spread his hands in a gesture that showed the extent of her gift in his mind and heart.

"Not that. Not that, ever. It is all I have to give you. But, Tom, I can not marry you. I will not –"

His smile was so gentle it almost broke her.

"I won't beg you, my love. But I will have you. Our son will not be a bastard."

She sat up and stretched to her full height then, gathering her wild curls in one hand over her shoulder and shaking her head at him.

The movement was an arrested one, however, because he simply captured her stubborn chin in his hand and lowered his lips to hers.

"You cannot doubt that I adore you," he whispered and her mind danced to the memory of his sexual prowess, only fully unleashed when there was no longer need for caution.

"You cannot question my devotion," he murmured between butterfly kisses and her memory went back to the day he was almost broken for her in the shadow of the cathedral.

"You cannot believe I will ever give you up so long as there is breath in my body," he pledged as his tongue teased her lips. And she shuddered and wrapped her arms around his wide shoulders, pulling him desperately close to fight the fear his words awakened deep within her.

"Then don't go now," she commanded, drawing back from his eagerly returned embrace. "Stay with me now. Love me again. Forget the cathedral."

His eyes closed and he drew a deep breath. "Ask me to forget God, then, too, my love."

She could not.

It was the step she could not take. For if she did – and if he did – Tom Builder would no longer be the man she longed for with an unquenchable hunger.

And in time, she would become for her builder, she knew, a thing he could no longer cherish.

So they parted late that morning, with nothing settled but everything promised in new life.

…

Tom did not ask Ellen to become his wife again.

Tom did ask God, however, to become his miracle worker.

He wanted, with all his heart, to share the perfect home with this tiny new life.

And he told Ellen, with the simplicity in which he always expressed his faith, that she should prepare herself to take part in God's answer.

His kisses always stopped the protests for which she had no meaningful words, anyway.

And they loved each other with a precious new passion and delight that nurtured their necessary secret for weeks while the sweet promise of new life in spring gave way to a summer defined by day after day of glorious sunshine and occasional evening showers heralding a sweet harvest bounty.

…

The devil cannot abide joy.

He will not quietly retire from the field when confronted with goodness.

It is the nature he has chosen to create havoc at God's expense, Tom knew.

So he was not altogether surprised when Alfred and Jack came to blows. He blamed himself – as always – but he believed with every part of his being that the breach could be healed. It was beyond his comprehension that his family of the heart could be permanently shattered.

Nevertheless, as the son of his body and the son of his spirit raged at each other and as his priestly friend forced a decision he did not want to make on his shoulders, he knew the burden might have broken him had it not been for the promise of the babe-in-waiting.

He would, he told himself repeatedly, learn from his foolish mistakes and he would, he promised himself, raise this son in the shadow of the cathedral that embodied light and love for him more each day as its walls stretched toward the heavens.

Even when Ellen raged at him and denied him the comfort of her body as she turned all her energy to healing her son's hurt, he held to his faith that someday – someday soon – all would be made right.

…

On the day of the fleece fair, his heart sang. He was close – so very close, he sensed – to peace.

Alfred was showing more dedication to his work on the cathedral, as though to prove to his father that his decision had been the right one. Martha was a sweet delight as she moved toward womanhood and fussed over her father's comfort and rest each evening. Jack appeared to be adjusting to his new role and to be finding an ever-strengthening bond with the man who truly did love him as a son. And Ellen's body bloomed with beauty that he read as a promise of a softening heart and a will to truly be one with him.

He wondered that the world did not guess their secret and realized only Ellen's exile prevented that. But that would end soon, he believed with all his heart. She would yield and present herself to him as a bride bearing the precious gift they could celebrate publicly.

It would all come right, he knew.

God would not be defeated.

…

When "Brother" Jonathan wandered a step too close to the cage of the bear that was the most popular attraction at the fleece fair, it was his father who pulled him gently back to safety. It was his father who offered the adventure of a climb into the heavenly heights of the cathedral. It was his father who drew him away from the beckoning but perilous edge of construction that seemed almost to skim the clouds' wispy borders.

And had it not been for the "devil's own," William Hamleigh, it was his father who would have made of him an orphan no longer that day.

…

Tom saw them all safe in the midst of the hellish attack, and he knew he had done his job well for those he loved beyond life itself.

Tom saw Satan's face but knew he need not look on it again.

Tom saw his cathedral – the light-filled space sheltering everyone and everything he loved – and knew it was his guidepost.

And between the final beat of his devoted heart in a broken and bloodied body and the pulse of new life in a different realm, Tom was changed from an imperfect, still-learning builder to a perfected master craftsman.

…

Even as the tears streamed down her face and Ellen's heart broke with grief for what she had loved and lost and what might have been but could not now, she was forced to confront yet more pain and anguish.

Fleeing the shadow of the cathedral to mourn its architect in her cave, she writhed and screamed alone there in agony and felt life flow out of her body on a tide of black-red loss.

…

When it was finally over and she could summon strength, she rose and bathed. She searched the pool of death that had poured out between her legs on the very bed where she and Tom had created their joy. And then she cradled the tiny, tiny body she found there in her palm.

Wrapping their son in a piece of his father's soft blue tunic, she placed him in a small box of stone the builder had carved for her. It was, he had assured her with the sweetest smile she would ever see, meant to hold his heart.

Forever.

She told Prior Philip, who put down her pallor and weakness to grief for his own dear friend, that Tom had requested to have the beautiful little casket placed in his arms and bound there with the grave wrappings when he should die.

The prior asked no questions.

Ellen told no lies.

And she buried her love with the only lasting gift she had ever had to give him – a guarantee that their babe was not alone.

Tom's son rested next to his heart, where his father had been holding him so gently all along.


End file.
